


Of tropical retreats and Skype dates.

by Chevy



Category: Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: F/M, Infertility, Owen swears like a sailor duh, Public Sex, Swearing, Zach Is Gay, headcanons galore, time-skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 01:31:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6403210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chevy/pseuds/Chevy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The next twenty years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of tropical retreats and Skype dates.

Their first date was an unmitigated disaster.

Claire was 90% sure Owen had asked her out on a dare, she’d had a meeting with Corporate that had gone nine ways to Hell, then he’d shown up in board shorts and she’d had a minor meltdown that had resulted in needing the itinerary.

Schedules, stark in black and white, she could control. He’d gotten drunk on tequila, she’d called him a cab, and any interaction they had following that was awkward and 80% snark.

After the evacuation, they stayed. Owen found her sitting at her make-shift office desk in the bunker, head in her hands. The words on the laptop had long since blurred, and nothing in the manifests was translating from dense legalise to English.

“Hey, Claire it’s, like…midnight. You okay?” He had gravel in his voice that suggested he might have been sleeping.

With a jolt she sat upright, breath catching as she tried to hide the fact she’d given into exhausted tears. “Yeah, yes. Thank you, I’m fine, thank you for your concern. I’m okay”

Backlit by the hallway, Owen stepped closer. Claire looked away, wiping at her eyes with shaking hands and wishing he’d leave. Instead, she felt the weight of his leather vest drop around her shoulders and he settled on the edge of her desk, crossed his legs at the ankle. When she looked at him, confused and grateful, he grimaced.

“Sorry. Not much good with the crying thing”

His vest reeked of gasoline and sweat. She shrugged deeper into it and expelled a watery laugh.

“Neither am I” she admitted.

“You should try and rest. The bunks in here aren’t half bad” he gestured the way he’d come.

Claire was already shaking her head, waving a hand to indicate the paperwork and blinking email icon and ten text messages, the call waiting sign blinking on the hard line. “No, I…there’s investors in Hong Kong wanting answers, and…there’ll be an inquiry…and...I…I have to contact those families-” her voice hitched, broke, and she pushed her face into her palms to hide a fresh rush of tears. “-Oh God, Grady, I should have-I should have listened to you”

He didn’t say anything, which felt a lot like twisting a knife embedded in her back, but his broad hand settled on her shoulder, then hesitantly slid up to squeeze the back of her neck. A muffled sob echoed against her hands and she retreated from the sound, angrily trying to get a hold of herself.

“Dammit why can’t I stop crying?!” she said, frustrated, wiping frantically at her face.

Owen grabbed her hands, curling his larger fingers over them. They were warm, she noted clinically as the rest of her mind went blank. “Hey, hey, hey, welcome to being human, babe!” She froze and stared up at him.

“What did you just call me?” she hissed, too weak for the statement to sound as affronted as she would have liked.

He rolled his eyes and stood up, giving her wrists a gentle tug. “Shuddup. C’mere” he inclined his head.

“What? No! Let me go. I-I have work to do” Startled by the intimacy, Claire pulled away and remained sitting.

Owen released her immediately, stuck his hands on his hips instead. “The last thing you need to be doing is working. Claire, hey-” he crouched by her chair as she sobbed again. He didn’t touch her, but she could feel the reassuring presence of him by her thigh as she closed her eyes.

“-You’re having an adrenaline crash, okay? That’s why you’re cold, why your hands are shaking, why you can’t stop crying. You need to get some sleep” he gentled.

Claire looked at her hands, which were trembling. “How do you…?”

His smile half-cocked, glittered in his eyes. Her heart stopped for a moment. “I made a living out of getting shot at for a while. I’ve seen a few things. Now, c’mon” he straightened out of his crouch.

Reluctantly, she stood as well, only to find her legs had turned to spaghetti under her and she slumped against the desk. Owen watched her, concerned, but still didn’t reach for her, though his fingers were twitching by his sides like he wanted to.

She sniffed. “I think I need a drink” she muttered, pushing her hair off her face.

There was a sloshing sound and she came face-to-face with the startling brilliance of Owen Grady’s grin…and a hip flask. He unscrewed the cap and took a swig before handing it to her. “Whiskey, Scout’s honour”

She snorted, amused at the image in her sleep-deprived brain of Owen Grady in a striped necktie and shorts, taking a slug of the smoky-honey liquor. She coughed, blinked her watery eyes and handed it back as he laughed at her.

“Tastes like sophomore year” she said with a tired laugh of her own. The alcohol rushed through her, warm and comforting as an expensive mattress and she sagged, wiping mascara away from her eyes. He was looking to the other side at a park map on the wall, taking another swig. She watched him, thinking about the deadly serious look on his face when he wrapped an arm around her waist by the Mososaur tank and reeled her in for one of those starving, teeth-clashing apocalyptic kisses, one that had turned her insides to molten glass and her knees to Jello. She wondered if he was too.

“Why was that date such a disaster?” she asked.

Owen fiddled with the cap of the flask. “Because you’re crazy and I’m a dick”

Reaching up, Claire plucked the flask out of his grasping fingers and let him gape at her as she took another sip, without hacking and coughing this time. “This is a better date”

He chortled and folded his arms. “Here I was thinking you’d be such high maintenance, but you’re a concrete-bunker-run-by-a-generator kinda a girl”

“I am full of surprises”

Owen studied her seriously for a moment. “You really are… do I get a goodnight kiss this time?”

Claire tilted her head thoughtfully and then nodded to herself, which made Owen’s eyes widen in surprise. He was still gaping at her when she finished putting the flask aside and hooked her fingers in his belt loops. His hands fell to where hers were and he planted his feet.

“Hey, Claire, I was kidding, I’m not- you don’t have to-”

She faltered and he hurried to correct himself. “-Not that I don’t want to! I mean I do, because you’re-but I’m saying that if you don’t, then you don’t have to” he stopped abruptly and she could see him mentally replaying his words.

“Okay” Claire agreed, leaning up on her toes to catch his mouth, still moving around the echo of his words as he flustered. For a split second, he did nothing, then he caught her face between his large, warm palms and pressed against her hungrily, body, mouth and soul wrapped up in her and connected to her by the hot, wet shift of their lips. It faded into a series of short, biting kisses, gasps shooting over the spit shining on their mouths. Then they stood close, foreheads together, and breathed.

“I have no idea what’s going to happen next” murmured Claire, eyes still closed.

Owen opened his to look at the woman he wanted somewhere in his future and smiled. Wordlessly, he scooped her off her feet, ignored her protests, and marched them both to his bunk.

* * *

 

So their second date went a lot better than the first. Then their third. In the madness of the law suits, the investigation, two separate inquiries and the court proceedings concerning Masrani’s will, Claire holed up in a hotel room in DC and tried not to contemplate tossing herself out of the twenty-third floor window. She hadn’t seen Owen Grady in three months, but she’d seen Grey and Zach more than in the last seven years collectively. She talked to her nephews on the phone every day and traded more texts that she could count with the handsome ex-Navy sailor, between press interviews and court hearings. They spoke about everything you were supposed to talk about on first dates; their childhood, hers in Ohio with Karen and their happily married, Bible-Belt parents, his in Hawaii with his father, twin half-sisters and his absentee mother.

Owen used military shorthand half the time and filled in the blanks with random pictures. A dog in the park, the label of the beer he was drinking, the grease and oil covered mess of his hands after servicing his bike. Claire had reached for Owen more than anyone else since college. He was the calm voice on the end of the line when Zara’s fiancé screamed at her at the funeral, and the winky face that answered a nasty, frustrated vent about media scum. He was the one Karen called and asked to convince her to go to therapy, who got on the phone and told her with ghosts in his voice that carrying the deaths of the men and women who’d died at Jurassic World was going to kill her more bloodily than Indominus Rex ever could.

At the end of another long, brutal court date, Claire poured herself two fingers of whiskey and crawled into bed with her laptop. There were approximately four million and two emails from her personal lawyer, the Park law team and six separate media outlets, two from Karen and one from Grey detailing the approximate number of leaves on the tree outside his window. So it took her a while to notice the orange notification hovering over her Skype icon. Her heart stopped and then skipped straight to racing when she saw it was from Grady. She’d bought up Skype and Viber to him as a substitutes for the colossal international dialling bills he’d mentioned racking up from South America. He’d been in his hometown of Honolulu up until three weeks ago, when the training and behaviourist teams had been given the okay to begin clean-up.

With a smile, she accepted the request, stood to refill her glass but was interrupted by the chiming of an incoming call. With a yelp, she slid across the covers and swung the screen to face her. His profile picture showed him leaning on a surfboard, hair wet and plastered to his face, tongue stuck out and hand in the shaka sign—thumb and pinky straight and middle three fingers curled.

“Shit!” Quickly, Claire rushed her hands over her hair, pulled it out of the lazy pony tail, fluffed her fringe, cursed at her dorky pullover, yanked it off and accepted the call before she could overthink it any further. Her projection in the camera showed her hair a mess, a black tank top not doing much to disguise her lack of a bra, and her pale face recently scrubbed free of make-up. With a short growl of frustration, she grabbed the pullover back and yanked it back over her head. Just as her face emerged from the neck, Owen’s face appeared on her screen.

He adjusted his camera, then squinted at her and grinned broadly. “Aw, that’s no fun. You’re supposed to do it the other way around!” he teased, obviously kicking back on a couch somewhere.

“Just how likely do you think that is?...don’t answer that. How are you? Where are you?” Claire replied, smiling helplessly. She could feel the weight of the day already rising off her shoulders.

“Back in the land of the biters. We got the fences up and running today...I ah…-” he trailed off, looking off to the side, scratched the back of his neck. Then he cleared this throat abruptly and came back. “-How’s things your end? We’re getting some varied reports about what the hell is going on”

Claire tilted her head at this tactless subject change, leaning forward. “That’s because what the hell is happening my end varies according to which lawyer is speaking. Owen. What’s wrong?”

He looked away again, scratching his chin. For a while, there was nothing but the soft skiittcch of his nails on his beard. “I saw Blue today” he said finally, continuing to stare off to the side.

Claire startled and inhaled sharply. “Is she okay? Was she hurt?” she rushed out.

Owen looked at her darkly. “Naw, the _asset_ was _undamaged_ , Dearing. Don’t stress” he snapped, shifting so the camera view went blurry.

“Don’t be an ass, Grady, I am asking because she saved our lives, okay?” she snapped right back, reaching out to hold the edges of her computer screen, like that would make him settle.

He’d set the laptop further away, on a coffee table maybe, and she had vision now of his chest and shoulders taunt with stress, the curve of his neck as he bent his head to rub at the sore muscles there. Her fingers ached to touch him and they’d only kissed twice. He muttered something at the floor that she didn’t hear, and looked up at her with a tight grimace. An apology then, lost somewhere between his low tone and the thousands of miles between them. Her reply smile was loose, tired, easier than she’d managed in weeks. His shoulders relaxed at the sight of it. Owen propped his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers together, resting his chin on them.

“It’s just…the field test. It was a failure, right? I mean, InGen…they can’t say that…they can’t use ‘em. Even if the raptors protected me—us—in the end, they can’t…they can’t call the field test a success, can they?” he asked, pleadingly.

Owen moved his hands like he wanted to reach through the screen and hold her, but settled for dangling his hands between his legs and leaning closer.

Claire sat back and drew her knees up to her chest, hugging them tightly. “I don’t know, Owen. It’s one of the discussions that InGen’s lawyers are having, that the investors are throwing out there…umm, here-” she glanced around and found a file sitting on her bedside table, leaning over the screen to grab it.

Owen got mostly blur, but the thought that the blur was the press of her breasts against the camera meant he was smirking when she came back into frame. She settled, crossed her legs and glanced at his smirk. Rolling her eyes at him, she plucked the results summary of the Velociraptor field test to show to him.

“ ‘Biological weapon application’?! They can’t be fucking serious!”

Claire shrugged. “Technically, the paper says the trial was a failure, but the inquest decides next week if the research division can be opened next year”

There was a beat of silence as they both reflected.

“Jesus” Owen summarised eventually.

She laughed and raised the dregs of her whiskey to him. “Cheers”

His eyes sharpened on it and his smirk reappeared. “Ms Dearing, have I corrupted you?”

Claire giggled and shook her head, wrapped her arms around one bent knee and propping her cheek on her arms so she could still look at him. Her hair fell in her face and her smile lit up her eyes, chased out all the ice in them. Owen was suddenly very glad Barry and the rest of the Raptor team had already retired for the night, because the soft look that took over his face would have loaded their jokes for months. He probably could have sat there just looking at her all night, so he was glad when she broke the silence;

“So where was Blue? When you saw her”

He grinned at the memory, temporarily distracted from the way the neck of her too-large shirt had exposed one milky white shoulder. “Near the T-Rex paddock. She’s still running with the big girl, can you believe that?”

“She’s loyal” commented Claire, exalting in his happiness.

Owen snorted. “Stubborn. You should have seen her when she was teething!”

* * *

 

Barry had known Owen through a lot. They’d pulled through Basic together, then two tours, then the shit storm that was InGen’s training program, then Indominus Rex. There was probably nothing more terrifying than realising that your bro was well and truly done for by a woman who came off as ice cold and practical as Claire Dearing. They were standing by the Compsognathus paddock, talking shop with the head trainer, when Owen got the call.

He swore, tugged the phone out of his pocket, and then his frown just kind of melted into legendary levels of goo. Barry craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the caller ID, both eyebrows shooting up his forehead when he saw the Skype screenshot behind Claire Dearing’s name. She was laughing, stretching out one hand to try and block the camera, nose screwed up prettily, hair a mess, all wrapped up in a sweatshirt too long in the sleeves.

“Oh shit man” Barry realised. Owen glared at him, holding up one finger to stall further comment as he accepted the call.

“Hey! Can I call you back? Just in the middle of….whoa, whoa, whoa, no hold up. Don’t you hang up, what’s wrong?....-” Owen’s face went from neutral to concerned to Pissed off with a capital P in about thirty seconds. “-They fucking _what_?!”

“They fired me” she whispered, voice hoarse and wounded.

“They-! How fucking-” Owen exploded.

“It’s okay-” Claire tried wetly.

“It’s not fucking okay!” His outburst had Barry stepping into his line of sight, looking concerned. The big man shook his head jerkily, waving a hand dismissively. “Are you okay? You gave them seven goddamn years of your life, babe, they can’t just-!”

Strangely, Owen’s fiery anger made it easier to calm herself. The endearment was cropping up more and more often since the first time she’d heard it in the basement of the bunker at the park and she kind of liked it more than she let on. She took a deep breath as he ranted and hushed him. InGen _could_ fire her, because the in-house investigation found her response lacking, and because they needed a scapegoat. She’d had a feeling it was coming for a while, but she’d been so focused on the law suit against Jurassic World that she’d been blind-sighted.

“Well it’s fucking bullshit-” Owen muttered when she’d finished explaining. “-You know what?! Fuck them anyway, look; you are too talented for their crap anyway, alright? Fuck ‘em”

His face changed again, grew nervous like Barry had never seen him, and he swallowed hard, bracing himself. On the other end of the line, Claire frowned at the silence that felt like a deep inhale.

“So…so maybe you should get outta town for a while?”

She’d been thinking the same thing, but was stuck as to where to go. She didn’t know where she was supposed to run where the media wasn’t going to track her down, or her overbearing mother. She said as much to Owen, who swallowed again and presented nervously; “Well, what-what about Hawaii? Seriously, you can have my bungalow, invite Karen and the boys, I mean Zach would love it. It’d be fun”

“Whoa” blurted Barry under his breath.

“What’s that about?” asked the Compe trainer beside him.

“Mr Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em is opening his damn man cave for her…and her sister” Barry explained, shell-shocked.

“No shit?! Damn”

As Barry nodded, agreeing, Owen suddenly looked like he’d been concussed with a piece of two-by-four. “Wha-really? You sure you want me there?....I mean, I can…I can probably wrap things up here in a couple of weeks, it’s just you know, kinda-no, I wanna…it’d be…yeah, you know, but I don’t want leave Barry-” he glanced over at his friend, caught him watching and glared. “-You know he’d screw it up”

“The hell with that” announced Barry, marching over as Owen turned his back and grabbing the phone, fending off the taller man with one arm. “Yo, Ms Dearing? Your man here’s gunna be on a plane in three days-fucking ow!- coz it don’t take a couple of weeks nothing to do the paperwork for one lil baby raptor. Pack your bikini bab-Jesus, Grady, ow! Hey! I wasn’t done talking!”

Owen drew a finger across his throat and apologised profusely to Claire, but he was on a plane to Honolulu three days later.

* * *

 

Their forth date kind of melted into their fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth until they stopped counting before they’d even been in Hawaii a week. The bungalow Owen bought when he returned from the Navy was a two bedroom, one bathroom deal with a foldout couch and a hammock strung between a pawpaw tree and a coconut palm out the back. Out the front of the house was a single lane road then the beach. There was a few hundred metres between Owen and his next neighbour, and nothing but state forest after his back fence. They had a couple of days to themselves before Karen and the boys arrived, when Owen met her at the airport and picked her up on the Harley road bike he’d had since he was nineteen. Which resulted in one of their explosive arguments that were becoming a habit, re: Claire’s infallible practicality versus Owen’s laidback nature.

“I’m using my neighbour’s truck to pick up the boys, and I did tell you to pack light”

“Grady, I’m wearing a skirt!”

“You’re wearing a _suit_. Who wears a suit on holiday?!”

“People who want to look like grown-ups while they’re in public!”

He threw his hands in the air and ordered her a taxi with such a mulish, hurt expression that she’d awkwardly conceded and got on the damn bike, heels and pressed skirt and all. She forgave him about a mile up the coast, wind rushing past her smelling like salt air and freedom, his back warm and wide and strong, his laughter in her ear every time she shrieked going around a corner. He even made her drink tequila, at a shitty little local dive where the bartender knew his name, and bought her a dress that didn’t need ironing or dry-cleaned, in beautiful muted sunset shades that should have looked awful on her but somehow didn’t.

(He admitted later he’d shown a photo of her to the woman at the shop, who’d picked it out for him)

They fell in the door, laughing, at midnight, waving goodbye to Owen’s bartender buddy who’d dropped them off. The screen door slammed shut behind them and Claire tumbled into him, curling her arms around his shoulders and leaving smears of pink lipstick down his neck. With the same infuriating ease as those long months ago in the Park bunker, he picked her up, only this time Claire helped, wrapping her legs around his waist and kissing him, joyful and careless.

“Uh-fuck me” he grunted as she tasted his last Long Island still lingering on his teeth.

She laughed. “There’s condoms in my purse”

“Jesus” Owen replied, depositing her on his breakfast bar and ravaging her mouth, calloused hands sliding up her smooth thighs till his fingertips brushed the edges of her panties. Claire pulled back from his mouth, left her hands to claw his shoulders, lifting her hips so he could slide the sensible beige cotton off her hips and drop them on the floor. With one hand on her knee and the other curled on her hip, he laid her back, letting the folds of the dress slide down, and sucked a bruising kiss on the inside of her thigh.

“Oh my God, this is probably unsanitary-Owen-this-we-you eat here, we should-” Any other sensible, mature suggestions were swiped clean out of Claire’s head as he curled his mouth around her clit, sucking and huffing cool air over the soaked heat of her. With a wail, she bucked up against the ruthless fucking of his tongue, then two fingers at once, the stretch so ridiculously perfect she stopped being able to form words that weren’t expletives or his name.

“Owen, fuck-God, please, please, please dontstopdontstopdont”

“So fucking close, you’re so close” he breathed harshly into the heated skin of her thigh, biting gently there again as she gasped and writhed.

“Come up here, please, want you-please, please, Owen” she babbled reaching for him. Owen interlocked their fingers, working her with his other hand, shook his head.

“Not yet, not yet, gotcha babe, I gotcha” He licked a long strip right through the middle of her, grunting as she pushed her manicured fingers into his hair and held tight, heels in his back as she rode his hand deeper, choked gasps tearing her throat. She raised her hand from his hair to slap it over her own mouth and muffle the cry that convulsed from the core of her outwards, her other hand tightening to bruising levels around his. For a couple of deep, sucking breaths, Claire lay there with an arm thrown over her eyes, felt Owen press hot kisses to the reddened bite marks on her thighs.

“Did I break you?” he joked as she sat up, panting. He froze at the hungry, undefeated glint in her blue eyes, reflecting starlight and oceans and the predatory gleam of his favourite reptiles.

“Oh Christ” he commiserated hoarsely as she tugged bossily at his loud Hawaiian shirt and sucked her own slick off his mouth.

Claire slid off the bench and let him pull the dress up and over her head, focused on the button fly of his Levis as he rained molten kisses across her neck and shoulders. Her body was firm, soft, so very, very small and naked and strong, pressed tight to him as she backed him to a bar stool beside the breakfast bar, his back to the bench for support as she tugged him out of his jeans, wrapping those long, soft, graceful fingers around his length, jeans pushed to his mid-thigh, sliding a condom on him as he leaned his head back and said a couple of Hail Marys, just in case.

“Fuck this is a bad idea-this is an goddamn accident waiting to-uhfuckingshit” This time, the ‘you’re planning to ride me in a very precarious position’ risk assessment came from Owen, but he shut the fuck up as Claire slid up onto his lap and guided him inside her. Fumbling, he found the stick under the stool and lowered it so he could plant his feet to steady them. Claire reached out behind them and clutched the edge of the bench at his back, breathing harshly into his neck, mouthing the stubble line at his jaw as she began to roll her hips, slow, like a dance. Owen wrapped both arms tightly around her waist, face buried in her breast, his panting cut off like he’d been winded.

“Not-fuck-not gunna last-not-shitJesus, Claire ‘m not gunna last long here”

Her laugh was beautiful, high and breathless and sucked in at the end as his hips bucked to meet her, almost sliding his ass off the stool.

“OhGod, that’s good, oh Owen, fuck, please, please, so good, shitfuck-uh”

He had to laugh too, the same out-of-breath, helpless, choked laugh that rippled through him. “You talk so fucking pretty then you get a cock in you and you swear like a sailor”

She tightened around him and he hissed, fingers digging into her hips. Her rhythm quickened, tight little gasps washing cold over the hot, wet bites she’d scattered on his jaw and neck. “Shut the fuck up for fuck’s sake-oh fuckingJesus” she blurted out, voice going high as Owen pressed a thumb to her clit and pressed tight circles against the nub of nerves, watched in awe as she keened, grabbing the hand she went to put to her mouth so he could hear the long, pitchy shout that tore out of her as she came again. His own orgasm hit him by surprise, he was so damn busy watching the put-together ice queen fall to pieces on his cock. The night air was cold on their sweaty skin, perched there on a bar stool, still pressed together, Claire tracing the scarred lines of the half-finished Jolly Roger on his left peck he had tattooed in a friend’s backyard when he was fifteen. There was a Sailor Jerry girl on his ribs with a Mare’s Leg shotgun in her hands and a geometric, Hawaiian-style shark on his right calf, his Navy badge on his bicep. He couldn’t see any ink on her perfect, freckled skin, but there was something cold pressed to his stomach that he got a look at as she stood up and he discarded the condom.

“Belly button piercing” he commented, grinning widely.

She went scarlet and scooped up her dress, which Owen caught the hem of and used to reel her in close. He’d tucked himself back in but hadn’t bothered to do up his fly and he could feel the metal bar against his belly. It made him shiver and run hot all over.

“Oh my Gooooodd” she whispered, mortified and hid her face in her hands. “It-wow, okay, it was college, and I was very drunk and-”

“You kept it” he pointed out. Claire chewed her lip and shrugged, not meeting his eye. “I kind of like it….?” she admitted cautiously.

Owen watched her fiddle with the dress in her hands, now covering up the piercing, obviously uncomfortable. “You’ve dated some real dicks, huh?” was what came out of his mouth, with more or less his usual amount of tact.

Claire stiffened, glared, and recoiled as he inwardly cursed his big fat mouth. “What the hell? Excuse me?”

He swore under his breath, helpless to take anything back as he watched her tugging her dress over her head with jerky motions and shaking hands. “You don’t- sorry, okay?! But you cover your mouth, when you come and that…you shouldn’t-and this? Getting embarrassed about the piercing? I just…I know it’s not my place, never mind” he shut down as well, folding his arms and looking at his feet.

She stared at him, equally as helpless, hugging herself tightly. “I…” she couldn’t find the words. “…I can’t have kids” He reeled and she pushed her burning face into her hands, silently blaming the goddamn tequila. She swore into her palms before briskly emerging from the shield of her hands to face this awkward disaster head-on, like a strong, independent woman. “Physically. Can’t. I had a cyst, when I was quite young, and the surgery….well. In any case, I apologise, for being blunt but I feel that it’s something you should understand before-”

“Yeah, okay, Ms Dearing, you can get lost-” he said sardonically. Claire’s heart sank and her stomach went cold. “-I kind of want Claire right now, not the chick in the suit. She writes itineraries for dates. I kinda like the chick with the piercing” He smiled lopsidedly and stood in front of her, hesitating before taking her hands. “I don’t care, okay? I think we’re awhile off that being a problem, and, well you know, if we wanna have kids, then we’ll adopt or something. Alright?”

“Oh” she breathed, shocked into wordlessness in the best possible way, and hugged him tightly. He said ‘if’ not ‘when’ and it was the tiniest thing that meant more than she was capable of expressing. In his arms right then, she felt more like a woman than she had since she was seventeen.

“Sorry I suck at the tact thing” he muttered, ears burning, into her neck. She laughed, a little watery.

“Me too. And the dating thing. I really suck at that”

His grin was a warm curve against her shoulder. “You’re doing pretty good”

Claire didn’t even correct his grammer.

* * *

 

Her life had fallen in rubble at her feet, but perched on Owen’s knee drinking a lethal cocktail from a coconut, salt drying in her hair and the unpleasant sting of sunburn on her legs, Claire couldn’t find it in herself to care. Her sister was screaming happily, more exuberant than Claire had seen her in years, as Zach picked her up over his shoulder and dumped her into the surf, Grey spluttering as he was dumped by a wave further out, a stack of Owen’s surfboards leaning on one of the palms. Owen pushed his face bossily into her neck and kissed his way up to her jaw. Lazily, she pushed a hand through his hair.

“This is pretty” he commented, plucking the edge of the sarong she’d bought at the markets with Karen.

“Mm. Thanks for today. I think it’s the first time we’ve had an actual worthwhile conversation since before she met Scott” Claire said slowly, still watching her sister.

He hummed in response, pleased. “They’re cool kids” he said dismissively, dragging his teeth over the thin shell of her ear, pulling her closer.

Claire whimpered a little, fingers instinctively clenching in the short hairs at the nape of his neck, dragging an aroused grunt out of him, that rumbled right beside her ear. “Jesus, Owen, don’t do that” she swallowed, turning over her shoulder to scowl at him. Her scowl froze, however, when she saw the dark burning in his eyes, the wicked curve of his smirk. Hands on her hips, he tugged her into his lap proper, so she could feel the bulge of his growing hard-on in his board shirts.

“Kinda thinking you don’t want me stop though huh?” he murmured tightly in her ear. She giggled.

“Oh God-quick, let’s go inside” she put her drink down and made to stand, but he wrapped one arm tight around her to hold her in place.

“I’m actually pretty comfortable right here”

Something flushed through her, but she couldn’t tell if it was ice cold or white hot, so she sat frozen, hands coming up to brace on his knees. A hand drifting down her damp body, from her neck, between the heaving valley of her breasts in her blue string bikini, to rest a large palm on the bone of her hip and slide his fingers under the elastic edge.

“Fuuuucck-Owen, here?! The boys are right there, Karen!”

He chuckled, lipping her ear lobe teasingly. The fingers in her bikini bottoms crawled lower. “They won’t see anything. If you don’t want to, we can go inside, I’ll peel this fucking bikini off you with my teeth and fuck you till you can’t walk straight” he said conversationally, but his middle finger was resting on her clit, stroking teasingly.

Claire turned her head into his neck and bit the pulse hard. Owen whined, fingers stuttering over her sex and pulled her even tighter to his cock, which was now very interested in the proceedings. “Make it qu-ick” her voice hitched as he changed the angle of his hand and rocked his hips up against her arse.

“Mmhm-think I can manage that. Think I can play you now, just right, just perfect, know what makes you really wet for me. Think this is a thing, letting you come on my fingers like this, out here in the open where anyone could come past, anyone could see…but fuck, Claire, I hope they don’t. Don’t want ‘em to see you when you’re strung out like this, like this you’re all mine” He felt her spine tense, the sneer in her mouth and shushed her before she could protest. He took her free hand and guided it behind her back to rest on his cock. “No, no, no, don’t get the wrong idea; coz this is yours. I’m yours. I’m-uhfuck”

She raked her fingertips down his curved length, found the tip and squeezed, cutting off his harsh, placating whisper. “Mine” she hissed, felt his cock pulse in her hand in response.

“Fuck it, let’s go inside, I needa fuck you” Owen growled.

Claire smirked and ran her hand down his arm, the one that disappeared under her sarong. “Make me come here and I’ll blow you”

The rush of blood from his brain to his cock made Owen legitimately dizzy for a good ten seconds. It was a really, really good blow-job.

* * *

 

 

They had two weeks, four days by themselves and ten days with Karen and the boys, before everyone had to return to the real world. Unsurprisingly, when Claire finally mustered the courage to turn her phone back on after a week of being incognito, she had four job offers from genetic research companies, as well as a major theme park in Orlando.

“Disneyland doesn’t have dinosaurs, right?” she asked dizzily, curled up on Owen’s lap trying to make sense of it all.

They ended up settling in Florida. Owen found himself a job with gators, blowing everyone away when he announced them to be ‘fat puppies’ and ‘the least bitey things I’ve worked with’ to his new colleagues.

Five years after getting together, Grey asked Owen at Christmas dinner why he hadn’t asked Claire to marry him yet. Owen went red, said “Way to ruin the surprise, kid” and pulled out a velvet box from his pocket.

They got a dog, and then three week old twin girls—Iris and Charlotte, from somewhere in Miami and an eight year old boy—Hamish from Texas.

Zach came out as gay at seventeen, which Karen and her fixed ideals about traditional marriage absolutely would not accept. Both boys landed at Claire and Owen’s until she pulled her head out of her ass. Read: Claire did it for her.

Grey went home to finish high school. Zach stayed, finished high school in Orlando, and went to college in Florida. He studied zoology, Grey mathematics. He and Grey were closer than ever, but Zach’s relationship with his parents remained strained for the rest of their lives.

Jurassic World reopened the year Hamish Grady turned sixteen, and he was at school when he saw his parents’ faces splashed all over the news. His Uncle Zach picked him up from school, and the girls were collected from day care.

They all retreated to Honolulu for a month while things died down, six of them all crammed into the bungalow. Hamish said it was the best four weeks of his life.


End file.
